It is simply further evidence that the costs of the nuclear “renaissance” are out of control. I mean what are they making these things out of? Platinum?

Imagine the scene. You step into your boss’s office to discuss the project you’re working on…

YOU (nervously): Good morning, sir. I was wondering if I could have a word with you about Project X.

YOUR BOSS (sternly): Ah yes, Project X. The one that’s 100% over budget and almost 100% over schedule. I hope it’s good news.

YOU: Er…

YOUR BOSS (fixing you with a deadly stare): Go on.

YOU (in a very quiet voice): The budget’s overrun by another 25%...

You can guess the rest. You’d be clearing your desk and finding yourself in the street before finishing your sentence.

With the nuclear industry, however, this is not only to be expected, it seems to neither surprise nor infuriate hardly anyone. Nuclear spokespersons give some weak excuses, promise lessons will be learned, and then skulk away until they have to make the same shaming announcement in a few months time.

Meanwhile, governments are blithely outdoing themselves in trying to give the nuclear industry billions in subsidies without the guts to call them subsidies.

If you had a child that showed this repeated inability to learn from mistakes you’d be extremely worried. But we’re letting these guys build nuclear reactors – one of the most dangerous technologies on the planet.

Meanwhile – right now – we’re losing the battle against climate change and nuclear power is a major roadblock to us all winning that fight.

Billions and billions are being spent on new nuclear reactors that will be online and producing electricity in 2012. No wait, make that 2014. Sorry, we meant 2016. How about 2018? 2020? If not then it’ll definitely be 2025. Okay?

No. It’s not ok.

While the energy companies are squandering unimaginable piles of cash and tinkering with experimental nuclear reactors that might be ready at some unspecified date, climate change is bulleting towards us like a runaway train.

The worst part about all this is that it doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be this way. We could be focussing on energy efficiency like there’s no tomorrow.

That’s two trillion euros saved – 2,000,000,000,000 – count those zeroes. That’s a planet-saving amount of money. Think of the clean technologies that money could buy. Think of the poverty and disease it could help to eradicate.

So how about it? It’s a lesson even those in the nuclear industry could learn.

“The last 24 hours have killed French nuclear finally because the cost makes it totally impossible to export and now you have one of the few partners actively withdrawing; it looks really bad,” says Per Lekander, an analyst for financial services giant UBS.

Hi Justin, ...and thanks very much for the really excellent post, ...riveting I might say even. Hope you don't mind I have it highlighted on my w...

Hi Justin, ...and thanks very much for the really excellent post, ...riveting I might say even. Hope you don't mind I have it highlighted on my website today, and on my Facebook page. Best to you and all there...

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(Unregistered) Zamm_
says:

Strange… this piece forgot to mention that there are two EPRs in China, which are scheduled to take a bit more than 4 years (yes, FOUR) to build, and actually seem to be on track, with major components getting installed pretty fast:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Reactor_vessel_installed_at_Taishan-0606124.html
http://www.i-nuclear.com/2012/09/12/edfchina-guangdong-complete-fitting-of-reactor-dome-at-second-taishan-epr/

The 1st EPR is in a tight race with rival 3G design AP1000, which may beat it out by a few months (construction also 4-5 y):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmen_Nuclear_Power_Station

But wait! Odds are good that yet another entry, from Korea, APR1400, will start up before, as it is already in its final testing stage (hot functional test):
http://khnp.co.kr/en/030103

Seeing this, I was dead scared by the "one of the most dangerous technologies on the planet" thing… until I googled "deaths per TWh"! If you had a child prone to such a "creative" approach to reality, wouldn't you be worried?

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(Unregistered) Beppe
says:

At my office in central Tokyo I wear warmer clothes in summer than I do in winter. Obviously there is room for some saving here, without any heatstrok...

At my office in central Tokyo I wear warmer clothes in summer than I do in winter. Obviously there is room for some saving here, without any heatstroke risk.
My car is 9 years old and travels 40 miles with one gallon (17 km/l) on highway. It can carry 5 people and 3 large suitcases, a few smaller bags and a stroller. How many other cars have room for improvement?

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Jan Haverkamp - Greenpeace
says:

@Zamm_ - welcome back after a long time of silence. You may not have noticed that this was addressing the European situation. But you are right - EdF ...

@Zamm_ - welcome back after a long time of silence. You may not have noticed that this was addressing the European situation. But you are right - EdF is building two more EPRs in China. Whether they are on time and budget or not is not easy to establish, as no construction timeline has been published, nor a final date set, nor a budget was mentioned nor regular updates on costs are given. We do know, however, that there have been delays and problems similar to the ones encountered in Olkiluoto and Flamanville.

The "deaths per TWh" google most probably brought you to an old study used by the EU called ExternE - this study is much criticised because of its cherrypicking use of statistics - for instance, Chernobyl was excluded. Apart from that, impacts from larger nuclear accidents go beyond radiation deaths, as you might have noticed again after Fukushima: around 600 deaths so far directly related to the nuclear accident (be it non-radiation), 160.000 people evacuated from which more than 60.000 for long term... probably far over a 100 Billion EUR in damages... Don't you feel your remark is rather cynical?

Greenpeace pleads for energy conservation - it is widely known and well established that there are a myriad of possibilities to reduce energy use up to around 50% with the same output of services (yes!) against low cost... Even the low hanging fruit is not used because there is not sufficient policy behind energy efficiency. It is time that the political will for this is moved from words into practice - big scale.

I keep wondering who or what you are trying to serve with your remarks, Zamm_ You're still hiding behind anonymity. I love discussion, but this anonymous poking looks a bit strange... like astroturfing, i'd almost say... Do I have a point there, or do you have other reasons why you bring this forward? I really am curious for that - genuinely.

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(Unregistered) Zamm_
says:

@JH:
EPRs & AP1000s in China. Given the current information available (heavy components, see my post), it seems things are progressing prett...

@JH:
EPRs & AP1000s in China. Given the current information available (heavy components, see my post), it seems things are progressing pretty well for both types. Of course, it's difficult to know from afar in detail, unless you read Chinese, which I don't (I guess we'll have to wait and see ca. 1 year). Fukushima actually seems to have had a positive effect on China, which has changed its nuclear policy to a reasonable 3G-only new build.

ExternE. Please read the text: it assesses the safety of "Western European light water reactors". The EU has quite high standards, as it not only requested RBMK reactors to be closed in Lithuania, but 1st-gen VVER as well in other countries (and required heavy upgrades for others). Also, you certainly are aware that European standards also require catalytic recombiners and containment filters, considerably limiting the consequences of even a Fukushima-style incident! Recognizing this (i.e. a bit more honesty) would do well for your credibility…
Newer studies than ExternE tend to use YOLL/TWh (years-of-life-lost) instead of "statistical lives", just have a look at the results of the EU NEEDS project:
http://gabe.web.psi.ch/pdfs/Energiespiegel_20e.pdf
The deadliest is biogas. The safest are hydro, wind and nuclear. Coal and gas got much safer (but still with the CO2 problem).

Fukushima. It seems most deaths are more directly related to hysterical fear of radiation… given the fact the extra fossil fuels will kill many more than the nuclear pollution! Some places should clearly be evacuated, but don't forget people in not-so-exotic places such as Cornwall endure close to 1 µSv/h. Are recommending them to evacuate as well?
(And please bear "catalytic recombiner" and "containment filter" in mind - I'm no fan of unsafe stuff.)

Conservation. I'd tend to agree with you, but such things unfortunately tend to defy logical thinking: just ask yourself why would people need cars with oversize engines and the like… or fly around the world each year for tourism (or for near-useless climate conferences). The (unfortunate) fact is they think they do!

Astroturfing. No, sorry. Just a (concerned, non-nuclear) technical person… who'd wish people started to get a bit more rational about policy!

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Jan Haverkamp - Greenpeace
says:

@Zamm_ Thanks for getting back to the level of discourse.

I am still not convinced by your reports concerning comparative over-all asses...

@Zamm_ Thanks for getting back to the level of discourse.

I am still not convinced by your reports concerning comparative over-all assessments of energy sources. The Paul Scherrer Institute is an institute that works mainly for the nuclear industry, the OECD and the EU. Its reports are highly self-referencing and for that reason often contested.
I think that the analysis of risk and risk-assessment made by the German Ethics Commission on a Safe Energy Future, which was based on a lot larger spectrum of research as well as included fundamentally different paradigms of risk-assessment, is far more spot-on: The effects of a large accident are so immense that in case there is a viable, cleaner alternative existing, the alternative should be chosen and nuclear phased out.

In spite of all the upgrades and back-fittings, European PWRs still carry a risk: the "unforeseen" margin in technical mess-ups and insufficiencies and human interference including terrorist attack, sabotage and acts of war. Sheer technically: hydrogen recombiners are a step forward, they have not been able to eliminate all cases of hydrogen accumulation - you simply cannot find all places in 131 European reactors where it can accumulate and put recombiners there. They reduce the risk of hydrogen explosions considerably, they do not fully eliminate it.

I wish filters would be installed everywhere - it is not the case yet, though the EU stress tests are pleading for it. But they also are not a 100% solution.

Concerning Fukushima: the reactions in Japan were far from hysteric - in contrary, we have seen too much cases of authorities and inhabitants hesitant to move because there was no order from above and too much discipline. People rightly followed orders to stay in home in spite of the stress. But we still have too many people getting too high extra doses.
Don't be fooled by comparisons with "background radiation". Also background radiation is a health risk. People in areas with high radon levels are well advised to ventilate their houses accordingly and recent studies have shown elevated levels of radiation-related health effects in areas with high background radiation. Regulators are right not liking full body scans and advising pregnant women not to take long-distance flights if not really necessary. Not a question of hysteria - a question of common sense.

Nuclear energy means facing rest risk all along the nuclear chain, high costs and large amounts of capital going around creating a hotbed for corruption (incl. problems in safety culture in some parts of the EU), an unsolvable waste problem and spread of nuclear weapon technology (proliferation). This all needs to be taken into the equation. And there are alternatives. The German Ethics Commission conclusion seems to be to me therefore the right one.

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(Unregistered) jhaverka
says:

@Zamm_ One more thing that is bugging my mind already for years: If reactor designs are so safe as you trust they are - with all their risk reduction ...

@Zamm_ One more thing that is bugging my mind already for years: If reactor designs are so safe as you trust they are - with all their risk reduction features including re-combiners and filtered vents... why does the nuclear industry fight the issue of supplier liability hand and teeth? It is clear they are not convinced of the level of safety they advertise... In order to keep them sharp, we should have full supplier liability, like we have it for cars or aircraft or any other engineering job.

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(Unregistered) zamm_
says:

@jhaverka. There is no such thing as full supplier liability! Some examples:
1) If you crash into a wall at 100 mph with your car, the manufactu...

@jhaverka. There is no such thing as full supplier liability! Some examples:
1) If you crash into a wall at 100 mph with your car, the manufacturer will most likely be not liable if you die.
2) If your fly into a severe hurricane and you crash, there's also a good chance the airplane manufacturer won't be liable.
3) The same applies if your house collapses in the case of an unexpectedly large earthquake, as long as the builder followed the building code corresponding to the design basis.
4) What is true for your house also applies to hydro dams. If you're curious, you'll find many countries severely restrict hydro dam liability anyway - so goes your renewable storage.

Other non-accident examples (which justify the risks taken for dams… and nuclear plants):
5) Wood stoves and coal plants don't have to pay liability for lung cancer. Even if one cannot link a particular cancer to a single facility, the overall causal link is established beyond doubt.
6) The difficult-to-quantify "CO2 liability" for fossils.
6) Wind turbine suppliers don't have to pay penalties when their creations cannot deliver energy because there is no wind. The same goes for PV without sun. Operators of classical plants often DO have to pay penalties, or lose substantial amounts of money anyway, if they cannot deliver to customers. In "advanced" countries like Germany, they're even responsible if they cannot compensate the former's wild variability.

The bottom line: there is no such thing as no risk, but a balance between positive/negative criteria (sustainability, risk, availability, economics, …) to find the lesser evil. This leads to "standards", and suppliers are in general liable only if they don't meet them: as you can see, this is absolutely not specific to the nuclear industry!
This is especially true of natural threats (earthquakes, tsunami, landslides and flooding), where local operators and authorities (should) have the required knowledge to determine, enforce and maintain standards. The suppliers' job and liability is only to provide high-quality equipment (initial, maintenance and upgrade).

A good specific example is Vajont dam in Italy. A 1963 landslide into the accumulated water created a huge tsunami, which passed over the dam, eventually killing >2000 people. Obviously, the builders ("suppliers") had done a very good job, as the dam was almost undamaged! Responsibility clearly lies with the operator and regulator in the site study, especially given the fact the instability of Monte Toc (where the landslide came from) was quite well known!

Sounds a lot like Fukushima (knowledge of high tsunamis in the past, and failure to heed lessons from the TMI incident, both from TEPCO and NISA). I'm not aware of any supplier having refused to install plant upgrades, are you?

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(Unregistered) jhaverka
says:

@Zamm_ There is, however, in all those examples you give supplier liability when product weaknesses have added to the accident. As examples: In the ca...

@Zamm_ There is, however, in all those examples you give supplier liability when product weaknesses have added to the accident. As examples: In the case of Fukushima, GE and Hitachi did not warn TEPCO for potential problems when pressure would rise rapidly, although both companies were fully aware of it; plant suppliers also did not pressure TEPCO to install filtered vents. The question is furthermore to what extent the suppliers have been negligent in their maintenance work (GE had over 40 people on site when the earthquake struck).

Only in the nuclear industry, we see the industry getting a nice advantage in the form of a complete release of supplier liability over - as example - the Japanese legal definition of liability channeling towards the nuclear operators. Isn't it high time to take away the perks for the nuclear industry and treat it as any other industry? Especially because there are today people suffering from the Fukushima catastrophe that have not yet received adequate compensation.

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(Unregistered) zamm_
says:

Humm… there is one major difference between NPPs and consumer product: the supplier design has to be approved first, in very detailed form, by the loc...

Humm… there is one major difference between NPPs and consumer product: the supplier design has to be approved first, in very detailed form, by the local safety agency, so it's a bit disingenuous to then claim supplier liability for an officially sanctioned design…
Then, the relatively (several hours) fast pressure rise is normal for a small confinement, something any high-school science student would know, so it seems reasonable to expect an NPP operator to understand this… More seriously, this issue has been common knowledge for >30 years, see link below, esp. ref.1:
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1225/ML12254A865.pdf
Moreover, the solutions are well known:
1) Bunkerized backup cooling (minimize occurrence risk)
2) Rupture discs (backup venting if valves fail)
3) Filters to mitigate releases
All these were implemented in the 1980s-1990s in most European plants, so one can only wonder what NISA (Japan) and NRC (USA) were doing during this time… Given the fact suppliers like to sell products, it's very unlikely filters were not offered to TEPCO, especially given their very low price (<1% of the reactor)!
Finally, it seems NRC, after NISA, also will require old BWR vents to be filtered:
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1213/ML12137A008.pdf
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/secys/2012/2012-0157scy.pdf
(In Europe, most countries require filters for all reactors, which is probably what Japan will do as well.)